It’s that time of year again – time for the young Liberals to choose their executive. I’m standing for Convenor of LY England and I have two main aims: to protect and expand Liberal Youth’s resources by promoting us within the Federal and English parties, and to turn us into more of a campaigning force across the country. Although I have two years’ experience as branch chair in Sheffield Hallam, I am not part of the LY ‘clique’ – if I become the new Convenor, I will be a fresh …

It’s that time of year when Federal Conference Reps are pestered for signatures to help get motions selected for Spring Conference and this is no exception.

Our motion concerns US-UK extradition terms and follows the conclusions of Sir Menzies Campbell’s report on the treaty recommending the introduction of the ‘forum bar’ to allow judges a greater role in deciding on extradition, and a minor amendment in the actual treaty to afford those arrested in the UK the same legal

Campaigning alongside a Lib Dem councillor recently, I mentioned the several recent high profile defections of Blairites to the Conservatives. I was a little disappointed they’d felt that the obvious choice was to go to the Blues.

People that liked Tony Blair more than they liked the Labour brand in general are precisely the kind of people that handed the party thirteen years of office. Their exodus from Labour, a backlash fuelled by the anti-New Labour revolution that put Ed Miliband in power, was a sign that the party was letting an election victory slip out of its sights.

Recently Sheffield Hallam student Richard O’Dwyer lost his court case against extradition to the USA for running a website that provided links to websites where users could illegally pirate copyrighted TV material. He will be lodging an appeal with the High Court and he cannot be extradited without the specific permission of the Home Secretary Theresa May.

Richard’s actions were not a crime in the UK because his website did not host the files but rather hosted links to the websites that did host the files, like Google does. Quite simply, it goes against the terms of the Extradition Treaty …

The last couple of evening riots in London, starting in Tottenham and working their way across the capital, seemingly sparing no town in its wake has left us in shock. People are being injured, the police and innocent bystanders as well as the rioters and looters. Again and again though, the question that people keep asking is “What’s going on?”

They are right to ask. Unfortunately, the riots have occurred while a high number of our leading politicians are out of the country. David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson, Nick Clegg, they all could have spoken with authority on the …

I’ve never been to such an event before so I didn’t know what to expect. Regardless, I made it to the Hustings in Kings Cross, the first ‘proper’ Hustings as I think the Chair described it.

Mike Tuffrey gave the first speech. It was fairly standard: he outlined his experience on the GLA and said that if he won the nomination, it would be his 14th election. “My 13th election wasn’t unlucky for me, in fact it was my best to date.” he said, naming a few impressive percentages the Lib Dems had got in the last London Assembly elections …

It’s hard to raise the subject of Lembit Opik without somebody cracking a joke. He’s certainly not loved by our own party’s leadership and many see him as more of a celebrity than a politician. I can, however, name two other people who are hated by their party’s leadership and seem to be two parts celebrity, one part politician, and they’ve both held the position of Mayor of London.

Lembit has great recognition among people. My own unscientific polling leads me to believe that he isn’t far behind Ken and Boris in who knows who he is, which is quite a …